


Hugo the Dalek

by Rae_Saxon



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Comedy, F/M, Fluff, Jealous!Master, Lonely!Doctor, best combination if you ask me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:14:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29878233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rae_Saxon/pseuds/Rae_Saxon
Summary: The Doctor adopts an abandoned Dalek and works on repairing it. The Master is j̶e̶a̶l̶o̶u̶s̶ shocked.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42





	Hugo the Dalek

**Author's Note:**

> For context, Colin Baker is currently rescuing an abandoned Dalek and I just... needed to write this. A whole one(!) person asked for this fic! I had no choice! The people (1!) have spoken!
> 
> https://mastershearts.tumblr.com/post/644849048216584192/colin-baker-adopting-and-repairing-an-abandoned

In the middle of one of his greatest speeches, she simply turned her back to him.

Quite frankly, he should've murdered her then and there. The one time he still held her attention was during his evil plans and there she was, simply turning around, letting him babble about full control, while staring at... what the hell even _was_ that?

“Oh no, you poor little thing!” he heard her say, closing his mouth in the middle of a sentence, as he watched her rush towards whatever she had spotted in the distance.

The Master turned around to the crowd of – earlier completely terrified looking – people he had threatened. They were now watching the Doctor with a mixture of nervous shifting and confusion.

“She always does that,” the Master told them confidentially. “Finds a way to mock me and just... grinds her foot in.”

One of the people closest to him attempted to shoot him a sympathetic look – Most probably so they wouldn't get shot.

The Master didn't care for their reasons.

“I'm telling you – Whatever it is is going to be entirely ridiculous and...-”

The Doctor had returned, rolling in front of her... no, she _couldn't_ be serious.

“A Dalek?” he called, his voice roaring now without the microphone he had organised beforehand. “What the hell, Doctor?”

“Look at the poor thing!” she called out as she walked past her earlier spot in the crowd and straight towards him and the Master stepped down from his stage and towards her, inspecting the Dalek with a healthy amount of distance, his evil plan completely forgotten.

“He looks... broken.”

“All battered and abandoned on the side of the road!” she nodded, her hazel eyes widened in pity.

The Master stared at her.

“It's... a Dalek, Doctor,” he reminded her, over-enunciating every word for her.

“I know that,” she replied, crossing her arms before her chest. “But he needs help! Look at him! I bet they left him behind because he's so torn down and just... left him like this.”  
  
“Yes,” the Master spoke tonelessly. “Because they're _Daleks_.”

With a little, stuttering buzz sound, the Dalek's head turned towards him. The Master noticed that the usual eye-stalk was missing, along with the speech-generator and arms and weaponry.

He started laughing. It sounded stiff and unnatural and not particularly gleeful, even to his own ears.

“Look at you, aren't you looking pathetic? Oh, that's right... you can't look at you!”

With a movement too swift to see it coming, the Doctor had positioned herself between him and the Dalek and _shoved_ him.

“Stop that! It's not funny! He needs help!”

“ _Help_?” the Master spit, still taken aback from the shove. “It's a Dalek, for fuck's sake!”

“Yes, so you've said like five hundred times now.” She turned back to the Dalek, a little hand on the dusty, lightly dented metal head. “Come on, Hugo, we're going. I'll see if I can patch you back up.”

“You... What?” The Master stared after her completely incredulous, as the Doctor left _his evil plan_ without a look back, the Dalek rolling before her contently.

“But what about all these people?” he called after her, not getting a single reply.

He turned back to the people crowded around him, none of them looking particularly scared anymore. They were staring back at him curiously.

“Oh just...” He flailed his arms around. “Go home. And... clean this up.” He pointed towards the hastily erected stage, the sound equipment and the fireworks he hadn't gotten to light yet, before walking off to his own TARDIS with hanging shoulders.

Blown off for a _Dalek_.

Now that was a new low.

  
  
He broke into her TARDIS two days later, determined to make her pay for her rude behaviour, but instead found all his plans blown from his mind again, when he saw her sitting on the floor, surrounded by glue, plungers in all sort of shapes and sizes and some forks.

In the middle of all of it sat the Dalek, facing her with glue dripping down his metal-clad body.

“Have you completely lost your mind?”

The Doctor looked up and the Master saw that there was glue on her forehead, too, making some of her blond strands sticking to her skin.

“I'm trying to repair Hugo,” she announced, completely unfazed by his sudden appearance. “But the glue just won't stick. So I tried it out on me but...”

“You've lost your marbles,” the Master interrupted her, voice weirdly high-pitched. “You've gone and done it, you've gone insane.”

“I thought I'd replace his weapons with these...” She pointed at the plungers and forks. “They're not really gonna harm people, but he won't feel as incomplete anymore, I reckon. I'll need to get an eyestalk from Skaro, though, the ones I tried to build won't let him see and he's very sad about it. I'm currently working on a voice-processor so he can speak with me, though.”

The Master felt his shoulders slump again as determination left him as quickly as it had come. The TCE in his hand felt heavy and useless.

“You... you want to go to Skaro for... for spare parts?”

“Yeah,” she grinned. “Bit risky, I know, but I can't leave him like this, the poor thing. He's already struggling enough from being left behind like this.”

“You named the Dalek... Hugo.” His voice was barely a whisper now.

“It suits him, don't you think?”

She stroked the naked metal head affectionately and the Master noticed that she must had smoothed out some of the dents he'd worn before.

“I... I think I should... just go...”

The Doctor didn't seem to even hear him anymore, had completely forgotten he was there, as she turned back to the voice processor her lap and started digging in a little, non-sonic screwdriver.

He swallowed down something painful, stinging but felt it swim back up, poke about his hearts and leave him trembling and angry and... aching.

“Well, I'll... I'll see ya,” the Master tried one last attempt to get her attention, but the Doctor was babbling some pointless reassurances at... _Hugo_.

He left without another word.

  
  
The next time he showed up in the Doctor's TARDIS, he did things differently. For once, he actually knocked. Second, he was completely drunk, smell of ginger radiating from him, clothes covered in red dust, torn and burned at the edges, his hair unmade and his eyes had dark rings beneath them.

The Doctor looked at him in surprise. There was still a trace of dried glue on her forehead, but she had freed her hair by now. She was wearing an apron and stupid googles and pulled a face when his smell hit her.

“What the hell? Have you been drinking?”

“Got you this.”

He held up his hand and clenched in his fist was a freshly ripped-out Dalek eyestalk.

Her stupid, beautiful hazel eyes gleamed at the sight.

“Where'd you get that from?” she asked while holding open the door for him and he slipped in, swaying slightly.

“Skaro,” he explained, face contorted into a frown, because really, wasn't that obvious? “Wrestled some Dalek for it.”

She shot him a look.

“You could've just taken it from one of the discarded Daleks.”

“Don't see you adopting any of them,” he muttered while he dropped the eyestalk on the floor in front of _Hugo_ , who was turning his head left and right, as if to try and find the source of the voices around him.

She ignored him and instead knelt down in front of the Dalek again, eyestalk in hand and started attaching the loose cables from him to the eyestalk.

“I think this could work,” she called out happily. “It's the right size and everything and it seems fully functional, too.”

The Master pretended not to feel the sting of being ignored yet again and noisily started dusting off his scorched coat.

“I wrestled a Dalek for you,” he said with a little sulk in his slurry voice, clearly having lost the battle against the sting.

The Doctor at least had the decency to look up, a little frown wrinkling at her forehead.

“Are you alright? You've been acting a little weird lately.”  
  
“Oh, you've noticed me acting any way at all?” he slurred back. “I wouldn't have thought.”

Finishing the last touches of attaching the eyestalk, the Doctor sighed.

“You should sober up a little. There's tea in the kitchen and you can take a shower if you like. You're talking nonsense.”

“ _I_ am talking nonsense?” he roared back. “ _You've_ adopted a Dalek but _I'm_ talking nonsense?”

She got up now, hands on her hips.

“What the hell is your problem with Hugo? You've been rude about him this entire time now! If you hate him so much, why did you bring him an eyestalk?”

“You!” he called out. “I brought you the bloody eye-stalk because you haven't talked to me in a week now and this is the only way you even notice anyone around you anymore!”

“Nothing but rubbish leaving your mouth,” the Doctor muttered. “Sober up, Master.”

In return, he shoved her. Back against the wall, a grimace of rage on his face as his hands burrowed into her shoulder and held her there. She pulled a face at the smell of ginger hitting her lips but he didn't care.

“I don't need to sober up!” he hissed. “You need to wake up and look at that you're doing!”

Behind him, he heard the familiar buzz of a Dalek eyestalk zooming in on them.

“MASTER IS JEALOUS,” a shrill, robotic voice announced.

The Doctor's eyes widened and flinched to... _Hugo_ and so did the Master's.

“I'm not jealous!” he called out at the exact same moment the Doctor said, “Oh, look at _you_!”

She used the Master's moment of distraction to slip out of his grip and headed towards the Dalek, who, the Master realised now, was actually wearing a fork and a plunger fastened to its metal case with... duct tape.

Some mechanic she was.

“Basically complete now!” She announced proudly and stroked his head again and the Master watched, feeling his face go weirdly numb.

“I... I helped,” he offered, sounding more lost than he had intended.

Both Dalek and Doctor turned towards him and suddenly she frowned at him, as if she'd just noticed the state of him.

“Master, what-”

“MASTER WOULD LIKE HEAD-PAT, TOO.”

“Stop... stop that,” the Master muttered, eyes flinching downwards. “I don't want you to speak about me, you... you _thing_!”

“Hey!” the Doctor called out. “You always do that. Maybe if you stopped being so jealous of my companions....”

“He's not your _companion_! You cannot be serious!”

“Well, the others all left, so it's only him now!” She called back and for a second, they stood there, rage meeting rage, when Hugo interrupted the tense silence.

“DOCTOR LONELY.”

All tension left the Master's body as he watched her actually _blush_ before him.

“Wait... what? What do you mean all the others left?”

The Doctor shrugged, looking uncomfortable.

“They want to go on with their lives, sooner or later. It always happens. Some big change or event and off they go, going on without me.”

“That's... that's stupid,” the Master mumbled. “Who would want to leave you.”

The Doctor gave him a sad smile.

“They always say that and then they find out for themselves.”

He stumbled a few steps forwards, wanting to touch her all of a sudden, wanting to wipe away that sad smile and cheer her up, hold her until she'd never be sad again and he was sure, so sure, this was the ginger speaking, but who cared, right?

Before he could reach her, however, Hugo had rolled into her back, bumping into her in an awkward attempt of a hug and the Doctor turned around swiftly, turning her back to the Master, while wrapping both arms around him.

“Aw, thank you, Hugo! I'm really glad I've got you. I'll never leave you behind like these meanies did.”

The Master froze on the spot, heat rising up from his shoulders and neck to his face and he couldn't tell if it was rage or just complete embarrassment.

Hugo's eyestalk zoomed in on him again.

“MASTER WOULD LIKE HUG TOO.”

“I would.. that's not... you stupid old tin can!” He shouted towards the Dalek. “I'm gonna rip your eyestalk off again and shove it up your...”

Warm arms closed around him, rendering him speechless and then suddenly the Doctor pressed a kiss to his cheek, grinning warmly at him and he thought he could even see a tiny spark of adoration gleam in her eyes... for _him_?

“Sorry. You're right, I've been ignoring you lately. I just felt bad for him, you know? All left out in the cold by his entire race, just for being a bit broken.”

The Master blinked at her, very fast, trying to think of any words.

“I'm a bit broken, too,” he finally brought out and the Doctor's grin turned warm and affectionate.

“Maybe I should replace your weapons with forks, too.”

“I can hurt people with forks,” he replied faster than he could think. “You should just distract me, really, so that I don't even get the idea to...-”  
  
She seemed to have gotten the message because within moments, her lips were on his, warm and wonderful and familiar and all his, and suddenly he found himself pressed against the wall and every thought of _Hugo_ was pressed out of his mind in return.

“He does not sleep in your bed, does he?” he whispered against her lips and saw the Doctor blush slightly.

“No, of course not.”

“THE DOCTOR IS LYING.”

“You have a problem,” the Master replied after an awkward pause, then turned towards the Dalek.

“I'll get you a real death blaster if you give us a night. Hang out in the gardens and shout at birds or something.”

“He doesn't want a death blaster!” The Doctor replied with a frown, but before she had even finished her sentence, the Dalek was rolling off through the TARDIS towards the gardens.

The Master raised his eyebrows towards her.

“Oh.”

“Once a Dalek, always a Dalek,” he informed her, pressing another soft kiss to her lips and tightening his arms around her waist, happily moaning.

“I thought he might be different,” she admitted sheepishly.

“And I thought I was the only super villain you let into your bedroom.”

He nibbled at her lower lip gently, grinning and the Doctor giggled happily against him.

“You're the only super villain I let into my hearts, doesn't that count?”

“As long as you don't call me _Hugo_ , I'll let it,” the Master replied, taking her hand and pulling her after her in a desperate attempt to not let her feel the way his own hearts had sped up at her words.

“Wouldn't dream of it, _Harold_.”

Touché.


End file.
